Chekhov on Theatre

Anton Chekhov, Stephen Mulrine

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781788500104
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Teatro europeo

A unique collection of everything that Chekhov wrote about the theatre.

Chekhov started writing about theatre in newspaper articles and in his own letters even before he began writing plays. Later, he wrote in detail about his own plays to his lifelong friend and mentor Alexei Suvorin, his wife and leading actress, Olga Knipper, and to the two directors of the Moscow Art Theatre, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko.

Collected for this volume, these writings reveal Chekhov's instinctive curiosity about the way theatre works – and his concerns about how best to realise his own intentions as a playwright. Often peppery, passionate, even distraught, as he feels his plays misinterpreted or undermined, Chekhov comes over in these pages as a true man of the theatre.

'Chekhov is an acute observer who could easily have made his way as a director or dramaturg judging by his ability to spot strengths and weaknesses in not only his own writing but that of others. This book builds a strong picture of theatrical life in Moscow and St Petersburg just before and at the turn of the last century, with vast amounts of bitching seemingly a commonplace. It can also serve as a tangential autobiography since, through its pages, it is possible to learn much about its subject's life and work.' - British Theatre Guide

1

Moscow Theatre, 1881–1885

Soon after his arrival in Moscow to study medicine, Chekhov began writing for a number of humorous weekly papers under the byline ‘Antosha Chekhonte’, and became a regular contributor to Budilnik (‘The Alarm Clock’) and Zritel’ (‘The Spectator’), in which his review articles on Sarah Bernhardt first appeared. Chekhov earned as little as five kopecks a line for some of these early pieces, even less than his artist-brother Nikolai, who also worked for The Spectator as a freelance illustrator. As Chekhov’s reputation grew, he published more substantial pieces and eventually came to the notice of Nikolai Leikin, editor of the St Petersburg journal Oskolki (‘Fragments’). Leikin commissioned Chekhov to write a weekly column ‘Fragments of Moscow Life’, the general tenor of which was to amuse sophisticated St Petersburgers with the eccentricities of ‘provincial’ Muscovites. For these St Petersburg articles, Chekhov wisely jettisoned his Moscow byline and wrote for Leikin as ‘Ruver’ or ‘Ulysses’.

Sarah Bernhardt

From pole to pole, her train sweeping the length and breadth of all five continents, she who has sailed every ocean, flown up, indeed, to the very heavens – Sarah Bernhardt, renowned a thousand times over, has not disdained to visit our white-clad Moscow.

On Wednesday at approximately half-past six in the evening, two locomotives crept majestically in under the canopy of Kursk Station, and we caught our first glimpse of the legendary, world-famous diva. We saw her, but at what cost? We got our ribs bruised, our feet crushed – our eyes ache from trying to keep them open, pressing the sockets with our fingers in a desperate effort to obtain a better view through the murky atmosphere of Kursk Station platform, at this child of Paris arriving so opportunely to shatter our monstrous peace. And all Moscow stood up on its hind legs…

Two days ago Moscow was aware of the existence of only four elements; now it repeatedly bumps into a fifth. Where it once acknowledged seven wonders of the world, now scarcely half a minute goes by without mention of an eighth. People who have had the immeasurable good fortune to procure even the cheapest ticket are practically dying of impatience, waiting for the evening. The stupid weather, the disgusting state of the pavements, the cost of living, mothers-in-law, debts – all is forgotten. The meanest, scruffiest coachman perched up on his box seat, has an opinion about the new arrival. The newspaper hacks have stopped eating and drinking and run around in every direction. In brief, an actress has become our idée fixe, and we feel as if some neurological derangement is going on inside our heads.

There’s been a frightful amount written about Sarah Bernhardt, and it’s still going on. If we were to put it all together, sell it by weight (at a rouble and a half the pound), and donate the takings to the Society for the Protection of Animals, we swear by our feathers: horses and dogs would be dining at Olivier’s or the Tartar, at the very least.

There’s been a great deal written, and of course a great many lies told. More lies, it seems to me, than truth. The French, the Germans, the negroes, the English, the Hottentots, the Greeks, the Patagonians, the Indians – have all written about her. So we’ll write something about her too; we’ll write, and we’ll try not to lie.¹

We won’t even attempt to describe her appearance for two entirely fundamental reasons; in the first place, our talented artist Nikolai Chekhov will provide a portrait of her in the next issue; in the second place, the Parisian-Semitic type doesn’t easily lend itself to description.

Mme Sarah B. was born in Le Havre of a Jewish father and a Dutch mother. Happily, her stay in Le Havre was a short one. Fate – in the shape of grinding poverty – drove her mother to take up residence in Paris. Once in Paris, Sarah recited a fable by La Fontaine with such feeling and expression, for the entrance examination at the Conservatoire, that the examiners unhesitatingly awarded her the top mark, and admitted her to the list of acceptances. If she hadn’t read that fable so feelingly, and received only a bare pass, say, chances are she wouldn’t have had the good fortune to turn up here in Moscow. Sarah was educated in a convent school, and as an incurable romantic, very nearly became a nun. However, the artistic impulse – the creative fire coursing through her veins – put a stop to that intention.

She first appeared on stage in 1863, making her debut at the Comédie-Française, where she suffered a catastrophe, and was hissed off the stage. After that fiasco, with no desire to play second fiddle at the Comédie-Française, she transferred to the Théâtre du Gymnase. Here fortune smiled on her, and she was soon noticed. She didn’t remain long at the Théâtre du Gymnase. One fine morning, the theatre manager received the following note: ‘Don’t count on me. By the time you read these lines, I’ll be far away.’ And indeed, while Monsieur le directeur was opening the letter, and adjusting his spectacles on his nose, Sarah Bernhardt was already on the other side of the Pyrenees.

People in general are terribly ill-mannered. Making them remember you is a difficult business. The shallow-minded French forgot all about Sarah while she travelled from one Spanish staging-post to the next, in the land of bitter oranges and guitars. When she eventually returned to Paris, she attempted to charm her way into all the great bastions of theatre, only to find every door firmly shut. Somehow or other, she managed to land a walk-on part at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin, at a salary of twenty-five roubles a month. She clung on to her insignificant little part, whilst eagerly studying all the roles in plays being staged at the Odéon. Eventually her hard work was crowned with success. In 1867, she made her debut at the Odéon in the role of Anna Damb in Kean, and of Zanetta in a play by Coppé. As Zanetta, Sarah was quite unsurpassed. So resounding her triumph, the doyen of French literature, the great Victor Hugo, created the part of the Queen in Ruy Blas for her. Playwrights hitherto microscopic began emerging from obscurity and were made visible, thanks to Sarah’s acting. Indeed, that’s how the work of Coppé first came to light. With her second appearance on the ‘premier stage of France’, the Comédie-Française, her fame grew and became so firmly established that in the whole of Paris, there was not a single shallow-minded Frenchman unaware of ‘notre grande Sarah’.

Sarah’s watchword was ‘quand même’, i.e., ‘even so, regardless’. It’s a fine motto, very impressive, dazzling, stunning indeed, and it brings on a sneeze. Men the world over will testify to the fact that the female ‘quand même’ is more terrible than the male: Sarah’s ‘quand même’ is stubborn and insistent. With it, she flings herself headlong into yawning chasms of a sort from which one can extract oneself only with uncommon intelligence and a will of iron, at the very least. She can pass, as they say, through hell and high water. And ultimately she has become celebrated as the ‘most original woman in the world’.

Above all else, she craves publicity. Publicity is her passion. In the second half of the 1870s, ‘Figaro’ and ‘Gaulois’ did nothing but sing the praises of their ‘grande Sarah’. Whole armies of reporters followed her around, treading on her train. Such vast crowds of people crammed into her reception room as surpassed even a host of creditors pressing in on a merchant’s prodigal son. Publicity is no small matter. It procured a fortune and made a name for Johann Hoff,² and of course played no little part in Sarah’s fabled exploits.

Most of all, Sarah dislikes Germans… Your good health, Madame!

Sarah Bernhardt competes with all the Muses. She is a sculptor, a painter, a writer, and what not else. Her sculptural group, After the Storm, is a genuinely serious work and was critically acclaimed in the Salon. Her painting is a little weak, but her brushwork is not lacking in broad, lush strokes. In both artforms, she has some talent.

Sarah was in London in 1879, and ‘throughout her entire London season’, wrote ‘Figaro’, ‘not a single Englishman was afflicted with spleen’. Last year, the manager of the Comédie-Française received that note: ‘Don’t count on me, etc…’ And while Monsieur le directeur was unsealing the envelope and placing his spectacles on his nose, Sarah was already at the other side of the ocean, in America.

In America, she performed miracles. She flew by train through a forest fire, fought with Red Indians and tigers, and suchlike. Among other things, she visited that professor of black magic, the wizard Edison, who showed her all his telephones and phonophones. On the evidence of the French artist Robida,³ the Americans drank the whole of Lake Ontario dry, after Sarah had bathed in it. In America she gave (horribile dictu!) a hundred and sixty-seven performances! Her total takings at the box office were so enormous that no professor of mathematics could express them. The French, they say, are already cooling towards her.

When she returned from America, the Comédie-Française didn’t invite her, but no matter. At the present time, she is on her travels. She tours towns and villages all over Europe, harvesting laurel wreaths everywhere – studiously avoiding Berlin. Poor Germans! It’s an ill wind, however – hundreds of thousands of roubles are now left spare, in German pockets, and hundreds of thousands of people can now purchase milk for their babies.

In Odessa, Sarah was welcomed in a rather eccentric fashion. They were delighted, shouted hooray, and threw pebbles at her carriage. Not the done thing, perhaps, but original all the same. One stone actually touched Sarah, the way a tangent touches a circle. Monsieur Jarret, however, got a splinter of carriage glass in his eye. Her debut in the chilly Russian steppe, as you see, was like nothing elsewhere.

We shall communicate the exploits of Sarah in Moscow to you, and we shall do so without prejudice. Like a dutiful host, we can turn a compliment with the best, but we shall criticise the artiste with the utmost severity.

Zritel’ (‘The Spectator’), Nos. 21, 22, November 1881

Sarah Bernhardt Again

The devil knows what!

We wake up in the morning, make ourselves handsome, don our frock coat and gloves and at about twelve noon drive to the Bolshoi Theatre. We arrive home from the theatre, bolt down lunch without chewing, and begin scribbling. At eight p.m. it’s back to the theatre; we return home from the theatre and it’s scribble scribble again until about four a.m. And this is every single day! We think, speak, read, write about nothing except Sarah Bernhardt. Oh, Sarah Bernhardt! This entire ridiculous state of affairs will end up straining this reporter’s nerves ad maximum, our disrupted eating times will result in a severe case of gastric catarrh and we’ll sleep precisely two weeks on the trot, when the estimable diva finally leaves us.

We go to the theatre twice a day, we watch, we listen and listen, and still can’t see or hear anything special. Everything is commonplace beyond expectation and commonplace to the point of disgraceful. We watch Sarah Bernhardt without blinking or wavering, drinking her face in with our eyes straining to discern anything, no matter what, other than a decent actress. What fools we...